The grandmother of today’s generation of emancipated women?
The recent discovery of the personal diaries of timelessly famous US actress Marylin Monroe entailed, 50 years after her premature death, a clear insight into her secretive personality.
At the center of her life : not men nor fame, but a tremendous drive to emancipate from her unfavorable upbringings and become a well-respected actress : « work is a form of love », she wrote. In these macho times, being a bimbo was an inevitable step into the movie industry ; one she shamelessly undertook and mastered. The fact that she constantly trained in all forms of arts and nurtured her love for poetry were largely left ignored.
Abused financially by her production studio, physically by the sportsman she first married, then intellectually by her second husband ; the disillusions she faced were proportionate to her lack of guidance in the earlier part of her life as well as her determination to overcome it. She bounced back every time with inspirational wisdom… Until the hypnotic figure stopped rebounding, and chose to turn her spirits off forever.
The director’s choice to have Marylin Monroe’s personal diaries read out by various contemporary actresses requires some getting used, which proves distracting to a content so powerful it did not need any artificial support. Form being favored over content, her duality still lives on. Today’s generations of emancipated women might unknowingly be descendants of a spiritually strong Marylin Monroe.